The French Mistake
by Queen Of The Lab01
Summary: The Doctor and Clara are off on another exciting trip, when everything goes wrong. Somehow they've ended up in a world where aliens never visited earth, and all of the things that they both remember were all part of a british Sci Fi show called Doctor Who. And they are not time lord and companion, rather two actors named Matt Smith and Jenna Coleman.
1. Chapter 1

Chapter One:

"Why do you have to ask such strange questions?" The doctor asked clearly irritated

"Its not strange to ask how the TARDIS works, I want to to know. Because I mean like what makes it go?" Clara argued

"It's a weird question, besides it's all sciencey whiencey and it would take all the fun out of everything. It just does okay. " The doctor answered straightening his bowtie

Clara rolled her soft brown eyes, it was like after all this he still didn't trust her enough to answer her questions. That, or he honestly had no idea, and he was just to stubborn to admit it—yep that sounded like him to her.

"You know, you can't trust me. Have I not proven that I'm loyal?"

"No, Clara it has nothing to do with loyalty. But I had this same argument with another of my companions once before, she just accepted that I wasn't going to tell her and she moved on."

"Well then she was mad, and so are you for thinking that I would do that."

"Mad mad Martha…" he mumbled to himself

Clara could never understand why the doctor kept his past so secretive. The Great Intelligence had said that the doctor had a dark past, which Clara could understand, he went around the world saving people and planets, losing people along the way surely. But what could he have possibly done to make himself like this?

"What?" she asked, hoping for the millionth time that maybe he might open up on his somewhat insane ramblings.

He looked up, with a glassy look in his eye, "No on-" he caught himself "Nothing," he corrected.

"So where to then doctor? Back out to see the stars or are we on a planned course?"

he smiled, sauntering over back to his control panel.

"Some where special," he said mysteriously "I got a note, a special note saying to go and see an old friend." He said holding out his brown booklet of psychic paper.

The words 'come quickly doctor.' Were scribed out on the paper, but disappeared again just as fast as they had come. It was signed with the name 'brigadier lethbridge-stewart'.

"Who is brigadier?" Clara asked, but she regretted it the moment she said it. The look on the doctor's face was heart crushing. His eyes were struggling to stay dry, and his lower lip quivered.

"A friend," was all he said "but that's not who this note is from,"

Clara stopped… "but that's who signed it," she stated

He nodded "Indeed, but there is more than one brigadier lethbridg-stewart," he said

"So it's a name?"

"yes and no."

"What does that even mean?!"

"Brigadier is a title, but lethbridge stewart, it a name."

"Why was it signed with both then?"

"Because the person that sent this, is the brigadier's daughter, and she knows that I will always come when called with that name."

Now Clara was getting suspicious, who was this person?

He trotted around the panel, pressing buttons and pulling levers, typing on the keyboard and watching and calculating the results on the monitor.

"I'm following the coordinates from the note,"

he told her

"What coordinates? I didn't see any?"

"Psychic paper, you get better at reading it with time. Don't worry about Clara."

He continued to type and press,, mumbling to himself words in a tongue she couldn't decipher.

"Here. !" he said as he flipped the final switch

There was a rumble beneath their feet, and the floor panels began to vibrate. But the motion crescendo-d became increasingly violent.

"Doctor, what's happening?" Clara yelled in a panic

He looked flabbergasted. "I haven't the faintest he said."

"The TARDIS seems to be reacting to the command, quite poorly it would appear,"

"Really?! Now what might have given that away!" she snapped

The console exploded into a mass of sparks, and the TARDIS veered to one side, nocking them all off of their feet. It finally stopped, with a massive quake.

"What happened?"

Clara asked, knowing she wasn't going to like the answer

"I don't know, " he got up and sprinted to the panels again, slapping on of the monitors when it wouldn't display the usual control screen.

"What do you suppose is out side that door Doctor?" she asked gesturing to the exit of the TARDIS

"We could be any where, swallowed by a back hole, stranded in E space, Pete's dimensions…" he said his final words almost a whisper

"Where?"

He walked over to the doors, and wrapped his hand around the handle.

"Well," he said "You coming?"

She smiled, and got up from the floor. Her legs felt week, and still nauseous from the trip. But mad it to the door without worry.

The doctor pulled the Handle and the doors opened. In that second, Clara would usually feel exited and pumped to see a new world, and visit a different time. But who knew what was beyond that door…all she felt was fear…

The sound of ringing bells and loud rustle filled her ears.

"Cut," a voice yelled "and print!"

Another alarm sounded as they stepped out of the TARDIS, and into an unfamiliar setting.

She scanned the room, and saw people in chairs waiting and watching them exit the TARDIS, large high tech cameras pointed in their direction.

"Doctor what is this?" she asked

"It looks like a sound stage…"

"Like in the TV shows,"

"Well…yea seems to be…"

a woman walked over to them both. She took the doctor's hand and led him away from the TARDIS.

"Great job Matt," she said, "That scene gives me shivers ever time. You too Jenna, fantastic job, glad you got that last line right, I know that you were struggling to get that one just right."


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two:

"Okay Matt take a seat," the woman said, she was pretty be all means but wore way to much make up. She was tall, and towered over Clara. Her enormous heels didn't help her seems any smaller.

Clara observed the room they had been herded into, a room with two mirrors side by side, reclining chairs possession in front of the mirrors. The two mirrors were lit up with stereotypical bulbs lining the perimeter of the flat surfaces.

The woman began searching the draws around the chairs that they were sitting in, clearly looking for something in particular but unable to find it.

"Ill be right back Matt, gotta check to other station for the make up brush, be back soon." Then she turned to Clara "Ill get you done after that Jenna, you guys are filming another scene out in the field next, so I need to get you fixed up with some earthy tones."

She exited the room, closing the door behind her.

"Okay, what the hell is happening right now?" Clara asked

"I don't know, but it would appear somehow the TARDIS's path was obstructed and I'd assume we fell through the void and came out in another dimension, where we are apparently…actors."

"She called you Matt, is that your real name doctor? I mean it's a fine name, but a bit anti climactic I must say."

He shook his head

"That's not my name, any more than your name is Jenna," He said

Clara sat silently; she still didn't understand what was happening entirely.

"Why would any one make a TV show about our lives?"

"What? Are you saying that I'm not exciting?" He asked looking hurt

"No, I'm just saying it just seems odd to think people have been watching our lives on the telly."

"We should find out more about this…"

He got up from his seat, and Clara followed.

"Don't you think she'll be back soon? The make up woman and notice that we're missing?'

"Nah, she's going to be gone for awhile, she wont be finding that brush anytime soon," he said pulling a make up brush from his jacket pocket.

"You little devil," Clara laughed

The doctor smiled back slyly.

Moments later they had exited the filming stages, and we walking around the trailers and exterior sets out side.

"So what are we looking for?"

"Somewhere to lay low for while until we can find a way to get back to the TARDIS."

She nodded, and stopped in her tracks.

"Look," she said her arm outstretched to one of the trailers.

It had a white piece of paper taped to the door, that read "M. Smith,"

"That's gotta be you!"

"Me?" he asked

"Yeah," she said, "try the door,"

He tugged on the handle and the door popped open. They entered the trailer, and were silent. It was massive, not exactly bigger on the inside, but certainly bigger than expected.

There was a laptop propped open on the table, Clara took a seat at the table and the doctor began to look around. There was a bedroom, and a small kitchenette, a television and a couch.

"Lets see…" She mumbled to herself as she opened the Internet browser.

She typed the name Matt Smith into the search bar, and pressed the enter key.

Almost immediately photos of the doctor popped up on the screen, she gasped. It was weird to see him in these pictures, she knew that whoever this was wasn't really the doctor, but wither way it felt wrong to see him dressed casually and sitting at panels at conventions and posing with fans and another attractive woman that was certainly more than a friend to him.

She clicked on of the links and smiled.

"Doctor," she called "I think I've found something,"

He came back into the room and knelt down next her viewing the screen.

"Okay," she said as she scanned the articles and scrolled through different pages

"It says here that your full name is Matt Robert Smith, you're 30 years old and from Northampton England."

She clicked on the filmography page, and read through it.

"You haven't been in many things, but it says that you are the current Doctor on a British Sci Fi show called Doctor Who."

He was silent.

She didn't know what to say, it was weird. She clicked on the show page link and was lead to the info screen for Doctor Who.

"Whoa, this shows been around for a long time…" she said in awe "50 years, that's insane…"

The doctor grabbed the laptop, and began to read. He clicked on pages about his character, and read more about his actor. His breathing became heavy; it must have been weird to read about his entire life on a character biography page.

Clara knew that he had former bodies, and companions. That he wasn't always the same man. But this took it to a whole new extreme; actors have been playing him for 50 years. It felt like a fairy tale.

He handed back the computer, he was silent and looked like he had just seen a ghost. She didn't dare ask him why.

"Lets see," she said closing out of the doctor's page " They called me Jenna, so…"

She typed in "Jenna/Doctor Who," into the search bar.

The page came up and she filtered through pictures of herself and articles about fake her. She began to feel sick, reading about someone else with the same face as her.

"Jenna-Louise Coleman," she read out loud " Blackpool Lancashire here is England, I'm apparently 27 and dating someone named Richard Madden, oh hes a bit cute." She said biting her lip

The doctor rolled his eyes off to the side.

"I was in Titanic!" she laughed "Oh…and Captain America, that's interesting."

"How is this helping?" the doctor asked

He shrugged "We need to learn about fake us right…"

He didn't have an answer.

"Lets go," he said closing the laptop for her

"Where are we going?"

"I have an idea,"

"Well, its not like that sentence has ever gotten us into trouble before."

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	3. Chapter 3

Chapter Three:

They both sat in silence for a minute, neither of them dared to speak and break the silence.

There was a knock at the door, and a panicked voice from out side called:

"Matt, Jenna please tell me you're in there?!"

They both glanced at each other, and the doctor got up and opened the door.

The woman from the makeup room appeared in the doorframe.

"Oh thank god," she breathed, "Why did you two leave?"

No response.

"I just went to get a new brush, and you two were gone! The whole crew is looking for you two! You guys are filming again in an hour, and we are late with your make up,"

She grabbed the doctor's wrist and pulled him out of the trailer.

His eyes darted back and forth and finally met hers, they seems to be begging her to help him. It was weird to think of the doctor as the helpless one, but here they were; the doctor completely helpless and confused. Clara knew she had to help him out.

"Sure we'll be right there…" she glanced down at her nametag "Kate,"

"You'd better, Steven's not going to be very happy if you two are late for filming,"

She closed the door, and began to walk away.

"Doctor," Clara, pleaded, "I'm not an actress, I can't film anything!"

"I know Clara," he was silent for a moment and he straightened his bow tie "We'll find a way back home, this isn't the first time I've been trapped in a separate dimension." He informed her

"When?" she asked

'Well now, lets see," he thought for a moment "There was E space, and Pete's world…" he stopped and looked up to shake his head "it doesn't really matter, but we need to get back, the longer we exist in this world the bigger the hole we came here through we become, that's a dangerous paradox that could rip apart the time space continuum,"

"Fine, but we need t get back to the TARDIS right?"

He nodded "Exactly, its in that filming stage we should go back, who knows what happened to the actual Matt Smith and Jenna Coleman, but we cant meet the if they are still in this world either, that would be catastrophic,"

She nodded and stood, he opened the door and they left the trailer.

Looking around at her surroundings Clara couldn't help but wonder where they were.

"Where would you say we actually are though, like what country or city?"

"Well, that cite said that this Doctor Who show was a British Sci Fi show so we know we are most likely somewhere is the UK. "

He looked around, and stuck his tongue out as if to taste the air.

"I'd have to say, approximately somewhere is Cardiff, Wales,"

Clara nodded, and they walked down through the rows of trailers their shoes splashing in rain puddles left on the wet asphalt pavement.

"There!" Clara said, pointing over to one of the large filming sets, "that's the one,"

They proceeded over to it, and went inside, the lights were mostly dark but they could see that the producers had left the TARDIS right where it had landed.

He breathed a sigh of relief.

"What's that for?" she asked, "We haven't gotten home yet,"

"I'm just glad that they hadn't moved it,'

"Why would they do that?"

"Remember to them it's just a prop,"

The doctor sauntered over to the blue box, and gave a tug on the handle. The door shook and a hollow wooden sound echoed from the inside out.

"it wont open," the doctor said in awe, he took out the key around his neck and tried to unlock the door again, still nothing worked. He hit the door with his fist, and pounded on it repeatedly. "No! don't do that!"

"So we cant get in?" Clara said a nervous tick in her voice.

"I have no idea why, but no its doesn't look like it."

A horrible thought then occurred to Clara,

"Wait! This might not be the TARDIS if our TARDIS was taken away, the prop people would have thought it was one of theirs, and moved it to storage or something."

He shook his head "No, its just the TARDIS reacting to her surroundings, she doesn't like this world and wont recognize us to let us in,"

Clara's heart sank, out of the corner of her eye though, as they began to turn an leave, she saw something.

"Doctor,"

He kept walking, clearly deep in thought as usual.

"Doctor!" She called again more forcefully

He turned at the mention of his name.

"What?"

She stood next to the TARDIS and pointed to one of the panes of glass in the window.

"Well this could be the problem," she said

He looked at it more closely; it was a crack in the glass. It had happened when they had fallen to Trezalore.

"That's it!" he announced "when hwe landed the TARDIS was damaged, she locked on to you the impossible girl," he said addressing Clara " because she knew that you were the root of the upcoming paradox, like when a computer saves a program automatically before you shut down. Anyway, the TARDIS saved you as a setting and tried to take us back home to earth, after we left. She was damaged the entire time we just didn't know because we were planning on going to Earth anyhow. Now it got all messed up because of the crack, it damaged the saved file and accidentally locked on to the closest world it could find with the same signature, which happened to be this universe."

She ran her fingers along the crack; it was hard to believe that a crack had done all of this.

"Where does that leave us then?"

"No idea, this has never happened before, it won't recognize us and hence won't let us enter the TARDIS so I can't do any repairs,"

She looked up at his concerned, "So, we're stuck here?"

"Until I can work soothing else out…yes…"

"Great…"

At that moment Clara's phone rang, She looked down at it, then back at the doctor.

His eyes widened.

"Whoever is calling will they be calling Clara or Jenna?'

"No idea,"

She flipped it open, and greeted the caller with a timid "hello…"

The voice on the other side was happy and energetic,

"Jenna," it greeted back, at least it answered one question. "You'll be glad to hear that I was able to arrange that lunch you wanted with your co stars,"

"Which co stars?" she asked, still unsure of what it was that they were filming

"You 50th anniversary co starts obviously," the voice laughed "David and Billie will meet you for lunch at that bistro place down on Clarkston,"

"Great," Clara tried to sound enthusiastic

"Hope you don't mind," the voice said again "but Karen and Arthur with be tagging along, don't forget to bring Matt, he will be oh so happy to see them again I'm sure."

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	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4:

"Turn left here," the doctor said, he held Clara's silver cell phone in his hand. "No wait, right…" he corrected flipping the device upside down.

He had been acting noticeably uneasy ever sense Clara had received a call from her publicist informing her that Jenna and Matt had a lunch date with their 'Co-stars'. She didn't recognize the names David, Billie, Karen or Arthur, but when she'd looked them up online, at the sight of their pictures the doctor's face paled and he hadn't seemed quite the same sense. Who were they?

"Up here I think," she said pointing to the sign hanging above a quant little brunch café. The sign dangled on two chains attached to hooks so that it swung in the wind with a slight rusty noise. The black sign read: _The Rose. _

They walked to the front door, and through the window she saw four people already seated at a booth on the far end of the room. One was a tall lanky looking man with sandy blond hair and slightly nerdy physique complete with comical winter cap and glasses. The woman at his side was beautiful, she was as tall as the man and thin like a model, her bright ginger hair was wavy and tumbled down onto her shoulders. On the other end of the booth was a skinny man with spikey looking brown hair and laugh lines around his eyes and mouth that hinted that he had a great sense of humor. And at this side a blonde woman with bright eyes outlined in black mascara and liner, and wore a scarf rapped around her neck and a wind blazer.

"Arthur, Karen, David and Billie…" Clara muttered softly.

She felt a strange feeling in her stomach like something was wrong and this wasn't meant to happen. She peered over at The Doctor, and her awkward smile fell.

His brown eyes were sunken into his head, and tilted at a downward angle. His face looked like it was being pulled down, because his smile was gone and a shocked look of disbelief was left in its place.

She immediately felt terrible, she hadn't even considered him, and She should have known he knew them; she was being inconsiderate. Whoever they were he recognized them and perhaps the last time he'd seen them things hadn't ended well.

"Who are they Doctor?" She asked softly

He waited a moment in silence, "They are all people from my past…or I suppose they are the actors that played them in this world."

"But who are they?"

"The ginger girl…" he looked down, either out of shame or guilt. "Her name is…was Amelia, I used to travel with her." He smiled slightly "The other in the glasses, that's…uh that's Rory—her husband. The Ponds…" He immediately refused to meet her eyes and tilted his head up, as if to keep tears from falling from his eyes.

"What about the other two?'

"The man, well he's a bit different…" he seemed to search for the right phrasing. "He is…he's me."

A jolt went up Clara's spine, she wanted to scream: "_WHAT?!" _but stopped her self, this wasn't the time. She just nodded.

Before she could ask, the doctor continued "and the blonde girl, that's…well that's Rose."

He had introduced the first two 'the Ponds' like they were his best mates, and the brown haired man like he was a dangerous secret. But he spoke the word Rose with a twinkle in his eyes, like he hadn't said her name in years, and he had forgotten how the word felt on his tongue. But behind each of his introductions was a hint of remorse, like they were not only people from his past, but people he didn't plan on seeing again in the future…that though made Clara shiver. Had all of these people been like her once? Traveling with the Doctor.

"We should go in." She suggested

He didn't respond at first, but eventually asked the last question Clara had expected to hear come from his mouth: "Why?"

"Why?" She repeated surprised "Because we need to understand this world, and if we raise too much suspicion directed towards us and after nowhere else to go, then we might have to tell the truth and we'd get tossed in a rubber room. That's why. So unless you've got another idea, we need to do this."

Her eyes fixed on him, she was used to seeing him strong and intelligent, as if he could never be hurt by the ills of the universe. But now he looked genuinely distressed and confused, this world was just as much a mystery to him as it was to her, and that though scared her beyond all reason. It didn't help that the people who clearly meant a lot to him kept showing up, and these people brought with them memories tethered to emotions, which he had long sense buried and refused to deal with.

"We're going in," she decided her knees feeling weak and shaky, but she nodded her head decidedly sticking to her decision.

She tugged on the door handle and walked into the café. The warm air greeted them with the smell of cinnamon and fresh baked scones and with a hint of something sugary and fruity like the filling of Danishes.

The four heads turned to face Clara and The Doctor, four pairs of eyes staring at them expectantly. Clara felt a moment of regret, and she worried that this was a very bad idea.

The ginger woman stood up and walked over to Clara. Towering over her she hunched over to wrap her long pale arms around her shoulders.

"Jenna, " she greeted in a Scottish accent "So nice to see you again, come on have a seat." She motioned with her hand directing her to a seat at the table.

She turned behind her, to see the doctor. The woman walked over to him, and with great familiarity, like that between great friends she hugged him, and smiled. Then pointed to his clothes, and with a wink she said:

"Hello Raggedy Man, long time no see."


End file.
